


Grant His Wish

by double_negative



Category: Hatoful Kareshi | Hatoful Boyfriend
Genre: Alternate Universe - Time Travel, Loss, M/M, Suicide
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-28
Updated: 2016-03-28
Packaged: 2018-05-29 16:05:12
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,438
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6383284
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/double_negative/pseuds/double_negative
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Is there anything you desire? I can grant whatever you wish.<br/>...<br/>The strange bird who comes to me is a magician."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Grant His Wish

**Author's Note:**

> I broke myself. Now I'll attempt to break you.  
> Sorry.

The one called Iwamine had a lot of lives.

In one he was born Ichijou Utsuro, an only son in the first family of their country, a sole inheritor of a proud name. In another he fell in love as Isa Souma, the youngest researcher in the Hawks Party. One time he was called Mishio Isshiki, broken and empty. He died as Iwamine Shuu and no one was left to remember him. But that's not important.

What's important is that he had a lot of lives. A lot more than a person gets to have, that's a lot more than one. He stopped counting at some point. Lives start. Hopeful, bright like a spark. Lives end. Painfully, miserably. If you live for so long and die that many times, pain just slips away, drips out like water from a broken glass until there's nothing left. His own pain meant nothing. Even the feelings fade, leaving the world around colorless and empty.

He was Isa Souma countless times. Again and again until even the name has lost it's meaning, until the light in his eyes faded, bright purple glow became dull and bored.  
Because no matter what Isa Souma does, Ryuuji Kawara dies.

They met on a summer day. Ryuuji smile was brighter than the sun shining through the huge windows of their laboratory. Ryuuji opened his arms and embraced him tightly instead of shaking Isa's outstretched hand. It was like the summer itself held him, warm and cheerful and Isa felt his cheeks heat up. No one has ever hugged him like that. No one has ever hugged him for that matter, but Ryuuji did.

It was always like he knew something that Isa couldn't say. Ryuuji was stupid and lazy, but at the same time he was a hardworking genius. Isa always wondered, how a man so blunt and careless can be so efficient. Isa always wondered, how he could fall for someone so plain. He never questioned this feeling, even if he never felt something like this before Isa was sure. He loved Ryuuji.

Isa loved candy he left for him and his wide smile and his straightforward manner of speech. His warm hugs that smelled like coffee and rubbing alcohol. Isa loved Ryuuji, but he never knew what to do with that love. They were co-workers, and after all Ryuuji was a married man, and Isa was just a scrawny teenager too confused to act his feelings out. He always thought his love to be unnecessary, indecent, unfit for an environment they're in. They spent eight years together, and the older Isa got, the stronger his love became, almost crushing him, swallowing him whole because it was kept secret for so long.

That is until Ryuuji died.

It was an illness from which there was no cure. The first time it happened, Isa felt something stinging in his eyes, something ugly and painfull swell deep in his chest. Isa asked, what should I do? What can I do? And the answer was clear. "I could've prevented this."

And so Isa Souma lived again.

Ryuuji's first hug felt like needles being jabbed into his skin. Isa remembered faintly, it happened before, it happened and somehow it never happened at all. They fell into routine work easily and Ryuuji was the man he felt he met somewhere before, his red eyes and lack of feeling of personal space were familiar somehow, but Isa couldn't place it. Maybe, he thought, it's because he's the first person that was nice to me. Maybe, he said, finding no explanation for the feelings he recognized even before their eyes met, dark red and warm purple.

He went with him into the expedition this time. Just knew there was something wrong. Something was going to happen, so Isa went with Ryuuji. The boat was caught in a storm. Isa's glasses broke and his right hand was too weak to hold him afloat, but even before his lungs filled with liquid he saw a mess of soaked blue hair go underwater. Ryuuji Kawara died.

They met again and again. It was different every time, but the outcome was the same. Ryuuji would talk to him with his dying breath, saying the same words over and over, words that started haunting Isa's dreams. "Find my son. Grant his wish." Six words like stabs into Isa's back. Ryuuji searching for his son who's existence he neglected for the past eight years they spent together with Isa. Something Isa realised was jealousy made him want to try once again. Because it was Isa who loved Ryuuji, it was Isa who took care of him. It was Isa who helped him. It was Isa who watched him die. Not his son.

And so the fate repeated again.

Each time Isa's love felt more crushing, because he knew it'll end. Eight years are not enough. Not enough because he wanted the feeling to be mutual. Even when he had the courage to confess, Ryuuji just laughed him off, saying he loves him too, but Ryuuji never really loved him like Isa wanted. In those last words he always seeked his son.  
The pain from dying doesn't even register anymore if you do it for so many times, the only pain he felt was from hearing his last words, each one like a turn of a knife in Isa's back.  
Find my son. Grant his wish.

Poisoning that was found out too late. Several different illnesses, never any luck with the cure. A car crash when he was stuck listening to Ryuuji take his last breath. Ryuuji fell from a hanging bridge. Ryuuji was smashed when the building collapsed in an earthquake. Ryuuji's head was blown open in an explosion in the lab. Over and over. Over and over. Ryuuji Kawara died and Isa Souma followed. Isa's favourite times were when their plain crashed and they died together, sometimes even holding hands. When Ryuuji falls his death for the second time, Isa realizes just before the impact, that before following Ryuuji, before taking a step off the same cliff, he didn't hesitate at all. He forgot to forget at some point. He knew what was happening. Ryuuji Kawara died and Isa Souma followed. Repeat. Each time with less hope for another outcome, knowing nothing can change, knowing he'll hear the same six words again.

"Find my son. Grant his wish."

Over and over again, countless times until the hope is only a gaping hole in Isa's chest. Until his life feels more like death, dreary and dull, with nothing but Ryuuji making any sense, having any meaning.

Isa forgot to forget and before he even realised it, his feelings were gone. He was empty, hollowed out by the love that was too much and never enough, by despair that came with knowing you love someone who could never love you. By the fate he could never change, no matter how hard he tried.

As the machines keeping Ryuuji alive went silent, his last words "Find my son. Grant his wish". As Isa brings a knife to his wrists those words repeat in his head, hurting more than the blade that plunges in his left arm. Never right, because the feelings were already dull in it and pain meant even less. Always the left one, with white skin, untouched even by rays of sun under Isa's lab coat. Time and time again if Ryuuji died first, he brought the scalpel to his arm. Poisoning himself or jumping off a building or in front of a train was too quick. Isa wanted to feel as he bled out and life left him, because for him it was easy, too easy for such a failure as he is and it was Ryuuji who felt the whole anguish and agony. Ryuuji always died for the first time. Isa just stopped counting at some point.

It was incredibly absurd and entirely too gruesome even for medically trained Isa. This time a wild bear tore Ryuuji's body from limb to limb as he shielded Isa from the animal that went down with a tranquilizer dart a moment too late.  
Ryuuji's body in Isa's hands again, the blood was pouring out of torn chest with every coughing wheeze and Isa is waiting, waiting for him to say it, for the nothingness that comes after those six terrible words, but Ryuuji is smiling. Someone rushes to help, but Isa knows it's too late. Someone screams and Isa almost loses Ryuuji's last words in the noise.

"Thank you, Isa. I love you."

And so Isa Souma gives up.


End file.
